Das Netz - English Edition: Digitalization and Society

By iRights Media

Digitalization is changing our world – and we are in the middle of it. The digital magazine "Das Netz" (German for "the net") gathers writers, activists, scientists, politicians and entrepreneurs to think about the developments of our digital life. More than 50 contributions reflect on the digital transformation of society.
Topics include the internet of things, artificial intelligence, ethics of algorithms and responsibility as well as social media and election campaigns plus digitalization in China and the USA.
A must-read for everyone interested in digitalization!

• Language: English
• Publisher: iRights Media
• Release date: Jul 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9783944362199

Book preview

All hands on deck!

Wow, we’re digital! Today, nothing is done without at least some element of digitalization. Smart procedures and digital management are everywhere. By now, everybody knows that the digital transition will play a role in their life, their company, their white paper… This is a good start. And yet, buzzwords alone do not add up to an intelligent strategy. Neither does a revamped approach to automation presented as digitization. Of course, the ubiquitous efforts to shape the digital future are very welcome. But still: these efforts could go even further and be of more consequence.

A digital transition is happening in China. A new tool here, a new idea there—implemented about ten times faster, and in a way that is ten times more encompassing than in Europe. How does one govern a society? How does one manage an economy? How are we to think in comprehensive digital ecosystems instead of limiting the focus to individual products and services? If you need inspiration, one should first look to the East. In this edition, you will get a fascinating view of the Chinese way into the digital age.

The internet and global digitization provide easy and rapid means to look beyond one’s horizon—and that is precisely what governments, companies and individuals should be doing. The digital world allows us to exchange perspectives, ideas and concepts, and to learn from each other on a truly global scale. This ease of communication is one of the simplest and most basic aspects of the connected world, and is still one of its major benefits.

In a rapidly changing world, governments should be coordinating and constantly updating their digital agendas. They need to take all of the digital transition’s enormous potentials into account—not only regarding the economy and innovation, but also with respect to non-economic aspects. A connected society is simultaneously an ideal sphere within which to discuss the values that shape our future, and within which to establish a balance between the interests of different stakeholders. But it is not only the state that is responsible for this discourse. All citizens are called on to express themselves. Where the definition and elaboration of values in the digital sector are concerned, almost all of us are sitting in front of the infamous blank page. It is one of our generation’s tasks to define what we want and what we don’t want, what is desirable and what we as a society deem unacceptable. This includes the continued development of our conventions. We will have to part with some old and familiar principles; we will have to establish new parameters. There is nothing more exciting! So please feel welcome to become political and to participate in this journey. No matter where you are—what counts is that you use your voice.

On behalf of the editorial team Philipp Otto

Photo: Bettina Volke

Philipp Otto is the founder of the think tank iRights.Lab and the publishing house iRights.Media. He is a publisher of iRights.info. He develops strategies and concepts to successfully shape the digital transition. In doing so, he works both with and for governments, parliaments, companies and representatives of civil society.

The internet works in mysterious ways

Life

Predictive healthcare: Medicine in the data revolution by Lydia Heller

Attack of the fridges by Jessica Binsch

Artificial intelligence: The dreaming algorithm by Christoph Drosser

What happened online? January 2016

The digital doping hunt by Martin Einsiedler

#scanallfishes

Universities face digital challenges by Ada Pellert

Digitalization is happening… in your aerobics class Interview with Stefan Will

What happened online? February 2016

Learning to program is a skill for life by Gerhard Seiler and Jutta Schneider

Emancipation through citizen science by Henry Steinhau

If you were Queen of the Internet, what would be your first decree?

Catastrophe! Communication in states of emergency by Julia Schönborn

What happened online? March 2016

The Twitter troll’s digital alter ego by René Walter

The summer of Pikachu by Dennis Kogel

Barfing unicorns and puppy faces: What is the secret ingredient in Snapchat’s success? by Duygu Gezen

Really great sex—just do it right by Christine Olderdissen

Happy coincidences and personalized filter bubbles by Christoph Lutz

What happened online? April 2016

Who runs the internet?

Politics

The 2016 US election campaign: Digital mud-wrestling by Lukas Schöne

The evolution of the digital election by Adrian Rosenthal and Axel Wallrabenstein

Why social bots threaten our democracy by Martin Fuchs

This message will self-destruct in three seconds… by Aleksandra Sowa

What happened online? May 2016

Politics has to be shaped by people Interview with Nadine Schön

The SPD is becoming more and more digital Interview with Katarina Barley

Open? Free? Inclusive? Internet governance at the crossroads by Henning Lahmann

How are the rules of the internet made? Interview with Wolfgang Kleinwächter

The digital rich-poor divide

Turkey censors both online and on the streets by Hauke Gierow

What happened online? June 2016

Will digitalization destroy our values? by Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger

What have algorithms got to do with human rights? Interview with Ben Wagner

An internet of self-determination, diversity and participation Interview with Heiko Maas

Missed opportunities, half-hearted solutions by Halina Wawzyniak

Digital policy decisions: Fail! by Konstantin von Notz

Digitalization is like the industrial revolution Interview with Christian Lindner

We need more European standards Interview with Jan Philipp Albrecht

Cautious steps into the minefield by Joerg Heidrich

Personalized pricing needs rules by Klaus Müller

What happened online? July 2016

Digital by default by Julia Kloiber

Economy

Towards a giant world computer by Stefan Mey

We’re about to experience a real killer app for blockchain Interview with Shermin Voshmgir

Bitcoin: The ascent of a borderless currency by Imogen Goodman

The political promises of Bitcoin Interview with Andreas M. Antonopoulos

What happened online? August 2016

Chinese internet firms find success with indecent exposure by Finn Mayer-Kuckuk

Wallet-less payment is an everyday affair in China

The next Silicon Valley? It could be here. by Tobias Schwarz

On robots and class struggle: Are we being replaced by machines? by Mads Pankow

What happened online? September 2016

We can guarantee the availability of the internet Interview with Harald Summa

Political action shouldn’t make things worse Interview with Alexander Hüsing

Culture

TV at the crossroads of internet and humanity by Andreas Busche

Hatsune Miku, the world’s first cybernetic star by Finn Mayer-Kuckuk

What Pokémon Go has in common with Locative Art by Valie Djordjevic

What happened online? October 2016

The moment when an unexpected perturbation changes the system from within Interview with Tatiana Bazzichelli

The inhibitions of Richard W. by Christian Rickerts

Digital passport: Citizen Ex

The myth of struggling through Interview with Lisa Basten

What happened online? November 2016

Caring for customs and heritage of the internet by Dirk von Gehlen

So two computers meet, and one says… by Alard von Kittlitz and Johannes Gernert

Gamification: The brain’s addiction by Ippolita

Artists of this edition

About iRights.Media

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Imprint

The internet works in mysterious ways

Chewbacca Mom

Screenshot: facebook video

Candayce Payne decided to document her irrepressible delight in the impulse purchase of a Chewbacca mask, depicting the famous character from the Star Wars films, and share the video on the internet. A few days later, the mask was everywhere, and Chewbacca Mom was a guest on countless talkshows. In the meantime, more than 160 million users watched the video and were almost certainly unable to resist laughing along.

#DicksOutForHarambe

Screenshot: youtube.com

In May, the gorilla Harambe was shot dead after a four-year-old child fell into his zoo enclosure. Within hours, a video of the incident was shared several million times. Social networks were flooded with countless memes, and the hashtags #Justiceforharambe and #RIPharambe began making the rounds. The comedian Brandon Wardell soon issued a call for Dicks out for Harambe. His appeal struck a chord with a growing number of people; some even put it into practice. It reached the point that Harambe was able to win 11,000 votes in the American election of November 2016.

Microsoft Chatbot

Microsoft has been working on artificial intelligence for some time. In order to gain insights into how people communicate with each other, they developed the chatbot Tay and set it loose on Twitter. It started out fairly harmlessly, but within a few hours Tay had turned into a racist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic misogynist. After 96,000 tweets, Microsoft pulled the plug. The question is, was the experiment a success?

Screenshots: twitter

Homewrecking penguin

Screenshot: National Geographic

National Geographic shared this heart-rending and dramatic film clip on Twitter. It shows a male penguin who returns to his nest to find another male at his mate’s side. The protagonist attacks the interloper, but ultimately loses the bloody fight. The female dumps him, and the internet community weeps (or is simply disturbed by all the gore).

Social Media Party

Screenshots: schleckysilberstein.com

Bento published an article on This Spring’s 15 Most Unique Magazine Covers. The German magazine Spiegel Online shared it on Facebook with the note Cover 5 had us in tears! and Vice commented, So something unexpected happened at cover 2 and we started crying. Something unexpected really did happen: A major meeting of all German social media editorial teams in the flurry of comments that ensued.

Hydraulic Presses

Screenshot: youtube.com

There was no limit to this year’s orgy of destruction: slowly, steadily, and with frightening power, in countless videos hydraulic presses have crushed everything in their path, from bowling balls to a safe to something that had once been considered indestructible: the Nokia 3310.

Tom Hanks or Bill Murray

Photo: Laura DiMichele-Ross

This photo fairly dated , but made a big comeback this year. Millions of internet users racked their brains to figure out whose visit had left this child so distinctly unimpressed. Was it Tom Hanks or Bill Murray?

Chihuahua or Muffin Puppy or Bagel Labradoodle or Fried Chicken …

Photos (3): Karen Zack

Chihuahua or muffin? Puppy or bagel? Labradoodle or chicken nuggets? This spring, the American Karen Zack asked us these questions and more. Some weren’t so easy to answer…

Life

Medicine

Internet of things

Artificial intelligence

Digital education

Catastrophes

Twitter trolls

Pokémon Go

Snapchat

Good sex

Serendipity

Predictive healthcare: Medicine in the data revolution

BY LYDIA HELLER

Apps and algorithms to help predict illness: Many of these applications fall into the lifestyle and well-being category of products, but they nonetheless indicate a trend which will change medicine. With big data, medical treatment will become more personalized, more preventative, more proactive.

Health apps for Smartphone are booming. Around 100,000 such apps already exist, meant to help with weight loss and to mitigate depression, to calculate fertility cycles, or to train the user in mindfulness. At the same time, new sensors are constantly being developed: fitness wristbands and smart watches count steps, monitor sleep and measure heart rates. Cameras, rings, patches and implantable sensors measure skin conductance, perspiration and blood values. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung: in recent years all the big IT players have been bringing to market health applications for home use.

This is because lifestyle, fitness and health data applications have developed into a huge market in recent years. They form the missing piece of a puzzle that can perhaps make good on the promises of personalized medicine made a decade ago. At that time, the human genome had just been decoded. Using the genetic code, it was said that it would be finally possible to discover treatments for cardiovascular diseases, cancer, or Alzheimer’s. Success, however, has thus far remained elusive. Direct causal relations between genes and illnesses are hard to find, and our genome, so far as we know, works in a much more complex way than we had assumed.

Unbelievable volumes of data

Since then, not only has computer performance drastically improved and the cost of gene sequencing fallen enormously, but there are now unbelievable volumes of digital data available, gleaned from patient records, studies, and, not least, the plethora of health, lifestyle and fitness apps. As people collect more and more data on themselves, and as the number of connections and patterns emerging from this data increase, each individual can more precisely trace their own biological makeup.

Just as the microscope made things visible which were much too small for the human eye, wrote American economist Erik Brynjolfsson a few years ago, the analysis of large volumes of data by means of algorithms makes connections visible which previously were far too big and complex for human understanding. But lifestyle data, or the personal, health-related data collected by many fitness apps is not easy to relay and aggregate. At least, for the time being, not all of it is. Researchers worldwide are already working on programs that can reveal the complex relationships between body, environment and behaviour and simulate how patients will react to treatments, as well as assist in developing personalized medical interventions.

At the paediatric oncology clinic in Homburg, Norbert Graf is working together with mathematicians, molecular biologists and biological computer scientists to develop a computer model for Wilms’ tumour. This childhood kidney cancer, the professor explains, forces doctors to choose whether to operate immediately or to first treat the tumour with a course of chemotherapy in the hope of shrinking it, so as to render the surgery more straightforward. But not all children respond equally well to chemotherapy.

The program aims to generate a prognosis based on data about the previous development of the tumour, medicines and their active ingredients and the widest possible range of clinical information on the patient. "We want to know how the tumour will respond to prior treatment.

Ultimately the system should say: ‘the tumour won’t get any smaller, operate immediately’." The bigger the volume of data on which the model can draw, and the more frequently its predictions can be measured against outcomes and adjusted accordingly, the more precise its prognoses will become.

Providing the best treatment right from the start

It would be immensely useful for doctors if it were easier to cross-reference data from medical records with personal information—and additionally with genetic test results and studies on the efficacy of different medications—, according to Norbert Graf. Many of his colleagues agree. That way, we would be able to provide patients with the best treatment right from the start, and reduce the side effects they suffer. Since 2011, clinics in several European countries have been working to network their databases, and to store information on, amongst other things, illness-related genetic and biological markers in blood and tissue samples. This has resulted in the the Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure (BBMRI).

In the USA President Barack Obama provided around 215 million US dollars for the Precision Medicine Initiative, which he inaugurated at the start of this year and which will see the genetic and health data of over one million Americans saved and made available for cross-referencing. This initiative should make it possible to perform tests in order to predict the effects of drugs. Analysis of this database should not only provide hints on how a treatment should be designed to battle an acute illness. The fact that this information is also linked to lifestyle data is an incredible treasure trove for medicine, says Norbert Graf, because it can also provide information on the likelihood of relapse.

Graf continues, Following a successful course of cancer treatment, you always want to avoid a relapse. ‘Is there something special I should eat?’ is a common question, as is ‘Should I do more sport?’ And if I had, for example, information from this kind of health tracker about patients’ sports and nutrition, and if I had long-term information about who had or had not had a relapse—then I would be able to say to someone: ‘if you do this, or if you eat that, you’ll have such-and-such a chance of avoiding a relapse.’ We can’t do that yet.

A data protection nightmare

Nonetheless, this development is a nightmare from the perspective of data protection. On the one hand, the quality of data recorded by wearable devices and trackers frequently falls far short of medical standards. Studies have repeatedly shown that such devices can often generate false readings. On the other hand, critics fear that the storage of health data cannot be deemed sufficiently secure to guarantee anonymity. One fear is that this could lead to discrimination or disadvantages for those seeking employment, for example, should employers become aware of illnesses or predispositions to certain illnesses. Critics are also worried that in the future it could become obligatory for one to gather data on oneself using various trackers or apps, for the purpose of providing it to doctors or insurers.

Even now, insurers like the German public health insurance AOK or the Swiss Generali Versicherung have started rewarding customers with bonuses and discounts if they can prove they have a healthy lifestyle with data gathered by app. Currently, it’s all voluntary, says doctor and e-health expert Tobias Neisecke. And it’s about rewarding someone who is being proactive about taking care of their health data. But it is probable that this could be turned around. At some point it will become about: ‘what’s my app score?’

Health insurers insist that there is no disadvantage for members who decline to take part in this health monitoring. Nonetheless, though it remains an open question, bigger business will probably be made with the data itself; it will provide raw material for prognosis models which calculate health risks, not only with a view to creating treatments which are appropriate for target groups, but also for the purpose of developing preventative interventions.

Targeting and speaking early on with at-risk patients

Since 2014, the Carolinas HealthCare System, a network of doctors in the state of North Carolina, has looked at correlations between consumer data and health data in order to identify patients who are at risk for specific illnesses. In Germany, the Elsevier Health Analytics think tank is working on algorithms which can look for patterns in anonymized health insurance data and identify groups of policy holders where there is a given probability that certain illnesses will arise. Doctors will be able to check their patient data against this filter and speak with at-risk patients early on.

The German health insurance provider AOK is also developing a cardiovascular risk assessor, according to Kai Kolpatzik from the AOK Federal Association in Berlin. It should predict how high your risk is of having a stroke or heart attack over the next ten years, on the basis of age and blood pressure, whether you smoke, and your family’s medical history. And what’s exciting is that this can tell you things like: What will happen if I take this medication? What effect would a change in lifestyle have?

Analysts calculate that if current double-digit annual growth figures persist, the market for personalized medicine will have a global turnover of 90 billion US dollars by 2023. This is money that should belong to the people who provide the data, says Ernst Hafen of ETH Zurich. Together with colleagues, he has initiated the MiData project: a co-operative whose members—patients and health professionals alike—are able to upload genetic and other health-related data onto a server, but decide for themselves what the data can be used for. Companies that use the data must pay for it. The proceeds are to be used to finance research projects which big private firms see as unprofitable.

Photo: private

Lydia Heller is a freelance writer, reporter and presenter, mainly working with Deutschlandradio Kultur, Deutschlandfunk and Deutsche Welle. Since 2008, her favourite—but not her only—job has been writing radio features about the environment, technology and science.

Attack of the fridges

BY JESSICA BINSCH

The networking of everyday objects is speeding ahead. From toothbrushes to baby monitors, all kinds of gadgets are getting connected to the internet. But the internet of things can be hacked, and botnets made of toasters can take over our machines.

When looking to buy a new home appliance, you normally wouldn’t give much thought to hacker attacks. But the next time you’re shopping, maybe you should keep Andrew McGill’s toaster in mind. McGill is a programmer and journalist; he works for the American magazine The Atlantic and his toaster was recently hacked.

Luckily, it wasn’t McGill’s actual toaster. But it should still give us cause for concern. McGill had simulated a toaster for an experiment—a toaster with an internet connection. He wanted to find out how quickly the gadget would be targeted by hackers. McGill was fully expecting to wait days—or weeks—to see a hack attempt, as he wrote in his report for The Atlantic. In fact it took less than an hour. Within the first twelve hours there were a further 300 hacking attempts.

McGill’s experiment is more than just an amusing anecdote. More and more everyday items are connected to the internet. From baby monitors to toothbrushes—all manner of gadgets are becoming smart. Experts predict that the market for networked gadgets will soon be worth billions of dollars annually. No wonder, then, that more and more companies are looking for a piece of the action. Internet giants Google and Amazon have brought their own control centres for networked households onto the market. Google Home and Amazon Echo react to spoken instructions from their users via microphones and built-in software assistants.

Even small and medium enterprises assume that in a few years practically all household goods will at least have the option of going online. We can observe the same development with television: there are now hardly any television sets for sale which are not smart.

But in the scramble for the market, security is falling by the wayside. It is becoming more and more clear that networked devices have their vulnerabilities, and 2016 could be a turning point. This past year, the first massive internet attack associated with networked gadgets was made public.

One Friday in October, internet users in the USA faced massive network failures. Big online services like Netflix and Spotify went down, as did sites like Reddit, the New York Times or Wired.

Among the culprits were insecure webcams. Hackers had joined millions of devices together into a botnet. This botnet targeted the DNS provider Dyn. Companies like Dyn are responsible for translating website names into IP addresses, the only way that a browser can call up the required site. Dyn is the internet’s telephone directory—and a weak spot in the global infrastructure.

The company was overwhelmed by a massive wave of nonsense requests, in other words, a classic DDoS attack, which bring servers to their knees by overloading them. For attacks like these, attackers use botnets made up of devices which they have brought under their control. Until now, this generally only meant computers and laptops, not video recorders and webcams.

Experts had already been warning for some time that networked devices could be used for attacks. The IT journalist Brian Krebs experienced this first-hand, when his website was attacked by a botnet made up of surveillance cameras and digital video recorders. The software employed was amateurishly simple, but its effect was devastating.

Warnings are growing louder. We need to save the internet from the internet of things, declared IT security expert Bruce Schneier in the technology magazine Motherboard. Schneier issued his call to arms only a few weeks before the massive attacks at the end of October. In hindsight it was almost prophetic.

The problem lies within the networked devices themselves. Or rather, with their manufacturers. Companies construct their products often without any thought of security and maintenance, says Michelle Thorne. Thorne works for the Mozilla Foundation, which is behind the Firefox internet browser. She has written a book together with Peter Bihr about the internet of things, called Understanding the Connected Home.

People buy a fridge, and then at some point they have to update it, says Thorne. But the tech companies are not ready to support that or think about long-term maintenance.

Often, updates are not possible, nor there are provisions for changing the standard password. This was how the attack on Dyn in October 2016 took place: the hackers used surveillance cameras from a Chinese manufacturer, which were running with a known standard password. Not all companies are familiar enough with internet security to properly secure the networked devices they started building. No one knows exactly how many cheap surveillance cameras or video recorders are connected to the internet without proper safeguarding.

There is hope that the recent attacks on the infrastructure of the